New Book Available; Or, The Crows of Wicker Park Now Available by Political Theorist Bryan W. Brickner

Announcing the novella thereafter: (Or, The Crows of Wicker Park), written by political theorist Bryan W. Brickner. Set in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood, thereafter completes the political fiction trilogy that includes hereafter (2006) and Parrot in the Atrium (2011).

"The three books form an oblique trilogy," Brickner noted; "The characters do not carry over from book-to-book - the effort to examine life does."

"Thereafter," Brickner continued, "expands and builds on an important Freudian quote; it's when Freud named the id ('the It' in German), and in doing so, Freud acknowledges the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Groddeck, author of The Book of the It."

Freud's quote in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (WW Norton & Company, [German 1917] 1965:90): "Following a verbal usage of Nietzsche's and taking up a suggestion by Georg Groddeck [1923], we will in future call it the 'id'. This impersonal pronoun seems particularly well suited for expressing the main characteristic of this province of the mind - the fact of its being alien to the ego."

Brickner expanded: "Thereafter attempts to show Freud misspoke; the id, Groddeck's It, is not 'alien to the ego': rather, it appears, the id made the ego."

"Thereafter is built on this missed characterization of Freud's," Brickner followed, "as the Nietzsche-Groddeck-Freud triad is tested by an Athena-Ishtar-Aphrodite trinity; this confluence fuels the main characters - five Chicagoans familiar with the desert art festival Burning Man."

"From a political fiction perspective," summed Brickner, "one could say thereafter is about the goddesses Athena, Ishtar and Aphrodite adding something to the works of Nietzsche, Groddeck and Freud; in political theory terms, thereafter is a commentary on the eternal feminine."

Brickner has a 1997 political science doctorate from Purdue University and is the author of several political theory books, to include The Promise Keepers (1999), Article the First of the Bill of Rights (2006), and The Book of the Is (2013); he is also one of many co-authors and publisher of the banned book The Cannabis Papers: A citizen's guide to cannabinoids.

The Bryan William Brickner blog is a collection of published works and press coverage and an ongoing resource for the political science of constitutions and the biological science of cannabinoids.